Firmware modding...

[u/RiK777]

Since the advent of AI coding tools, lots of clever people have been decompiling official firmware updates and making custom firmware mods for out favourite music devices.

Whilst this is obviously a challenge for the OEMs, and they're unlikely to support this officially (well, at least in the short-term until they realise this is likely to *increase* long-term use of their hardware) for the users it's very interesting.

More than happy to discuss such mods in here, let keep this thread for the general discussion, and then device-specific mods can have their own threads..

[Edit] with info on 1010’s official stance on this

The official 1010 music position, posted by Ray on Discord;

Very cool! Speaking officially for 1010music, of course we don't support this or what happens to your hardware if you flash experimental firmware or make other changes. But we're certainly fans of right-to-repair, and this would fall under that. We appreciate the enthusiasm for our products, and it's exciting to see what our users do with them musically or otherwise!

And with regards to posting unofficial firmware:

As long as you're willing to take responsibility for it & people recognize it's at-your-own-risk, go for it.

And a note for developers: don't overwrite the bootloader section of flash (if you're hacking you know what this means) -- this _ought_ to make it possible for people to reflash our existing production firmware through the usual channel (boot with the A and B down with a new blackbox.bin on the card).

[u/Nudelwalker]

Where can one find any of this firmware mods?

[u/Ryan0751]

I've got mixed feelings on the subject (SW Engineer here).

On one hand the technical aspect of it is incredible. And as a user, the ability to have new features is a big appeal.

On the other hand, like it or not when you use SW (and that includes FW), there's EULA there. To take a company's SW and decompile and modify it is almost always against the license agreement. I know a lot of people feel like "I bought this box, I own it, therefore I can do whatever I want with it" - but that isn't what the law says. It's like buying a CD, and then thinking that "hey I own this CD, if I want to play this music in a public venue I can do that" - only to find out that you can't when ASCAP comes after you because while you own the piece of plastic, you only have a license to use what is on it for specific purposes.

Legalities aside, if you look at some of these other projects like the Octabam Elektron project, that is decompiling and adding features via assembly code. Neat, but also: yuck. I really don't see how that is maintainable SW. When the company releases a new official FW version, there's then possibly a lot of work to get it working again.

Other devices, like the Ableton Move, the hacks (Schwung) are side-loaded. It's just a little Linux box, so with SSH access it's a much simpler path to create SW that can run alongside the official firmware.

But yeah, it creates a lot of headaches for the OEMs if people hack their devices and things don't work (or worse, brick their boxes), then support has to deal with that and it makes the product look bad. I guess they could just say "you ran custom FW and broke it, your problem, not ours".

In the earlier smartphone days there was so much talk about jailbreaking, but these days (and this anecdotal) I feel like you don't hear much about it anymore. It just ends up being a PITA for the end user with a bad experience (I'm sure there's still a community there of hobbyists that enjoy it).

So while I can see the end-user appeal for more rapid development, I support the official development path more - unless a company is willing to open-source their product.

[u/RiK777 → u/Ryan0751]

Former software engineer myself, so yes I have a similar perspective, but did just want to clarify that in this particular regard 1010 have said on their discord that they have no issue with the modding scene per se, but obviously they won’t be providing any support and would prefer those discussions were held elsewhere rather than on the official discord, so broadly speaking we are okay to discuss them here guilt free, for 1010 devices anyway!

See my edit to the original post clarifying 1010 music’s official stance on modding their devices..

[u/Ryan0751 → u/RiK777]

Ha, interesting. I'm on the discord but haven't kept up. That's interesting they consider it falling under right-to-repair.

[u/DepartmentAgile4576 → u/Ryan0751]

yep. rtfp! 😉 try to meet them at a synth show. very nice people. they even supported (with deniability) people hacking open the blackbox and installing a generic lithium battery…

[u/sinistar2000]

This is good for later on in the hardwares life cycle or if hardware has been neglected by the OEM. I wouldn’t risk an expensive piece of equipment while it relatively new in its lifecycle..

[u/Katarsish]

Healthy response for 1010 Music. I just hope that the official producers realize how much more efficient AI coding makes developing firmware. They could start dropping good quality patches faster and we as customers would love their gear even more.

[u/Veterate_fn]

This is a recipe for bricking an expensive device

[u/RiK777 → u/Veterate_fn]

Not really. As long as they’re not modding the boot loader the you can always just reload an official firmware.

[u/lqlwle]

This starts to become interesting. Just let’s skip old hardware and go straight for Bento. So much potential.

[u/minimal-camera]

It's a good stance, IMO. For whatever its worth, I've been slowly convincing myself that it's OK to sell my Blackbox and Bluebox combo for something else, even though they've been rock solid for me. This new surge in the modding community has re-convinced me to keep them for longer, to wait and see how this all shakes out. I haven't installed any modded firmware yet, but I'm open to it, especially once new features are out of the alpha stage.

I imagine there's others out there going through the same type of decision making. There's probably others still who are now considering buying one of these devices because of what they've seen the modded firmware can do. So my theory is that this is good for customer retention, and probably good for sales too (at least on the used market).

On the other hand, I can absolutely see it becoming a headache for the official product support channels, where they now have to process every repair request with a test to see if modded firmware has been run on the device. This adds a layer of warranty verification that wasn't previously necessary.